Access to the Web has thus far been limited to people who have access to a personal computer. Yet many people cannot afford the cost of even a relatively inexpensive personal computer, while others are unable or unwilling to learn the basic computer skills that are required to access the Web. Furthermore, Web browsers in the prior art generally do not provide the degree of user-friendliness desired by some people who lack computer experience, and many computer novices do not have the patience to learn how to use the software. Some people, for example, dislike an interface that requires them to identify hypertext objects and to use the point-and-click technique to browse through Web pages.
Most people, however, feel quite comfortable using a remote control to operate a television set. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a means by which a person can access the World-Wide Web without the use of a personal computer. In particular, it would be desirable for a person to be able to access and navigate through Web pages using an ordinary television set and a remote control. It would further be desirable to have a user interface by which a person can use a remote control to navigate between hypertext objects on a Web page with minimal effort or thought, so that a person feels more as if he or she is simply changing television channels rather than utilizing a complex computer network.
It would also be desirable to provide a user interface permitting a person to input all the text and data for the set-top box without the use of a keyboard or any other device apart from the remote control unit and his voice. The need and desire to enter alphanumeric text through non-alpha or numeric remote control and voice is ever increasing.
In the United States of America it is standard for every telephone (both conventional and cellular) keypad to have letters as well as numerals displayed on the keys. Thus, the key representing the numeral “2” has the letters A, B and C displayed and the key representing the numeral “3” has the letters D, E and F etc. It is common to represent a telephone number by the letters, which correspond to the digits on the keypad of the telephone set. Thus, for example, a software company with the name “Uniqa KK” can acquire the telephone number 864-7255 and can advertise to customers that the company's telephone number can be dialed by activating the keys with the letters U-N-I-Q-A-K-K. Dialing these letters will result in only one digital sequence, but one digital sequence can be represented by many letter sequences.
Therefore a need exists to provide a user with a simple straightforward method and apparatus for inputting alphanumeric text through a non-alphanumeric or other device having fewer keys than the desired alphabet or through voice; and the need exists to provide a system that is not restrictive to direct correlation or a specialized domain, i.e. where a variety of choices are available and easily input.